What We Now Know As R
by ThePuppetLooksLikeGale
Summary: This is a series of drabbles about Grantaire. They range from his childhood to death and I am happy to take any prompts you like! R&R would be great. (r&r, get it? r?)
1. A Hanging Offer

**_This is a short one to start us off. Gives a bit of an overview of things, I hope you enjoy!_**

There was a time, through the nineteenth and twenty-first years of his life, when everything was okay. He was not deeply troubled. He was not living in fear. He looked up or straight forward at least instead of directly down. He was okay. He smiled.

He spent most of his time painting (he got offers for more than model, he gladly took them up on it. Who was he to deny a canvas a nude Parisian?), and sold his paintings quite successfully through an old man. The same old man offered to show his painting later that year. Grantaire left the offer hanging with a wiry grin and a "I'll let you know.".

The city was large -and_ so full_ of people- and he got lost many a time. He would return to his room in Saint-Michael eventually,the trip may have been shorter if he didn't introduce himself as R to anyone friendly enough. They would laugh because of the pun. He would laugh because they never asked for a first name.

The barman at the Café Musain laughed the loudest and a genuinely so -not like the women would at the parties he previously attended, when his first name was still part of the equation, when a man told a bad joke- and Grantaire, who had seen the effect first hand of men being around too much drink, wondered how he was so happy. He stayed for a drink of some horrid green thing he couldn't swallow to find out.

He returned to that café again and again. And after about a month he could down the green fairy without a problem and the barman's stories weren't having the desired effect. It was around that time the barman (Louis) started to laugh less, and the words 'successful young man' that had once been thrown around by Louis so often in happiness and pride, were now said as if he were in mourning. He no longer cared about the 'painting' of those naked models, he could get what he needed in easier ways. The trade between the old man and himself slowed down to a stop as cynical and chastising words increased with the young men who had now almost taken the café over.

It wasn't until a much later time when he was somewhere around thirty, and forced to the floor of that café and his idealist's feet, by force of far more bullets than necessary, that he remembered. A fast pang of guilt ran though him, he was in debt to that old man and he was horrible for not closing that offer in time.

He would be able to apologize later, though. The old man could almost he described as decrepit now, he was sure to follow his young painter soon enough.


	2. Potentially Full, Perpetually Empty

There has always been a whole lot of potential talk around Grantaire. Said talk could be found in one of two forms; smiling, hopeful, perhaps a twinge of pride, or tight-lipped, frustrated, dripping with disappointment, and a little to accurate for Grantaire's taste. It came at him from parents, siblings, strange aunts, bar workers, friends, the man down the street, everyone but himself it seemed. He avoided the subject, hid from it even, the only words he gave on the subject were about how he needed to be told what he 'could do'- which if found in the past tense, would be spat out and not simply muttered as much as he needed to be shot in the foot.

Tonight the topic was wasted potential. The spirited lecture, as one could call it, was presented by a tight lipped, frustrated, disappointed idealist. It'd been a long time coming and went exactly as one would expect. It came in after some brief back and forth, both tired, one of them drunk. It was spitting words that apparently everyone meant but no one said, and a few witty remarks that went unheard. It couldn't have a proper rebuttal, for it came from a man who knew so much about using potential that he could make a believer out of a cynic. It was creased brows with stiff shoulders and wide eyes and tremblings chins. It faced no contradiction. It ended the meeting.

It took six hours for Grantaire to even consider leaving his chair. Six. Six self-pitying, tragic, drunken, almost comatose, hours spent thinking. And thinking. And drinking. And thinking. And wallowing. And drinking some more. And receiving some shrugged off greatly appreciated pity from some grisette. And thinking. And then suddenly drunk enough to believe that this 'thinking' was a good idea, and the plan it caused wasn't pathetic. Six hours before he could put down a bottle and leave. (In his defense it takes a great deal of effort to properly 'shrug off' a grisette.)

The operation did not elicit the intended results. Even worse it brought on the results one should expect. He helped a woman who had fallen stand. Or he had offered to at least, she seemed to have interpreted his gesture an offer for something else and smacked him across the cheek. A lonely yet relatively sane looking elderly man was sitting alone scowling down at his hands. He no longer used 'looking sane' and 'actually sane' interchangeably.

And while leaving the man or running away from the old man and into a part of Paris he would normally avoid two men, about his age, approached him and asked if he needed some help. One laid a hand on his shoulder, the other raised his brow. Grantaire blanked, apparently thrown off by an act of kindness. It was a few more moments until he nodded, wide-eyed and stupid. They smiled. Thinking only of how exactly the old man had cut his head so there was blood dripping into his eye not of where he was, or what time it was, or how these men dressed, or why the one was practically curled around him and the other had a hand on his back, as he should have he allowed them to walk him into a building. It wasn't until he was inside and blushing how did that man bend like that?- did he realize that he had drastically misinterpreted their definition of 'help'.

While stumbling, because he was disgusted and wondering how they hadn't been reported/arrested/killed yet, not because he was wondering if he could bend like that too out of that fine establishment he ran a hand though his hair. He had sat next to Bossuet early and found it reasonable to check if his misfortune was contagious.

The sun was coming up now and Grantaire was done. But it was not done with Grantaire, for as it brought out the sun it woke the children. Children come in mobs. Large, curious, fearless, questioning mobs. "Who are you?" "Wha happened to ya face?" "Why is your nose that shape?" "Can ya talk or is ya stupid?". Children also have the habit of answering their own questions. "We d'know him, don't wanna either." "He probably got beat cause he can't do nothin'" "Don't be daft, it's cause he's ugly'!" "Don't talk, no no no. He's not gonna talk. He ain't got nothin to say." "He can't do nothin!". One of the little girls couldn't be older than five so he continued to keep his remarks unsaid and he marched (stumbled) on. They let him be 200 yards, a pebble or ten and a few comments not suitable for children later and he dragged himself to his room, wondering how even children knew he was useless.

Maybe everyone actually was thinking it and wasn't saying it. Just common knowledge that was occasionally thrown in his face. He could hear them say it now, one voice stung more than the rest, the one voice had actually said it.

Grantaire fell into his room and closed the door with his foot. Standing in the room thinking, bleeding, disappointed, and painfully sober was not making him feel better. The last aliment listed was solved first, with a pipe not a glass. No longer wanting to stand he sat on the floor and took an inventory of all its items, he wouldn't hear if he was thinking. There were three empty bottles, one half empty bottle, a shirt, a waistcoat with a hole in it and a messy pile of art supplies shoved in the corner.

He kept the pipe as he set up, which took longer than it should have. And then there was paint. There was paint everywhere and he couldn't tell you what he did to get it there but he knew he did it. The only thing that wasn't a mess around him 5 hours lets say was the canvas or the painting as it would be now. He stared at it, at the lines, the symmetry, the color, the power of it was good. He like that. But then there was the nothing. Nothing. A blank splotch right in the middle, branching out towards the other parts, infecting them. A splotch that was supposed to be full, could be full. A splotch he couldn't bear to put a brush on. A splotch that sent him into a bit of a fit and sentenced the painting to death.

And as the smoke spilled though a crack in the wall an old woman muttered about how the boy two doors down. He had been yelled and slamming on things, and now burning something all this morning and now the afternoon. She could only think that when he had been such a fine young man once, he really had to potential to be better.


End file.
